Floating Community Ecological Sanitation Project – Tonle Sap Lake

Among the most pressing issues confronting Cambodians from the rural areas are water and sanitation. Access to such facilities is particularly difficult for those that live in floating and flood-affected communities on Cambodia's waterways. Human development in the country is still restrained by pollution and poor health. Despite such situation, appropriate options have yet to be established to address these challenges as well as manage sanitation.

With no affordable sanitation options available for the floating and stilted communities, majority of the populace are left with no choice but to urinate and defecate directly into the lake, thereby significantly contributing to its contamination. As a result, the households are exposed to a range of pathogens and residents in the floating communities suffer from diarrhea and other waterborne diseases considering that the lake water is a major source of their daily subsistence (for drinking, washing, bathing, and fishing).